BLUE WINDOWS freewrite

                  

Betty's window frames are the color of the sky

Lucia starts each morning with a cigarette

The sun weaves patterns through the vigas,

the bars in the adobe walls

imprisoned sunlight

the leaves of the cottonwood

elaborate on the small breeze

and cast long slanted shadows

on the wall

Mayflies dance vertical spirals

in endless progression

like an elevated vertical infinity sign

Maybe it's because they don't live so long

they make the sign

Cathedrals of light spewer from the steeple

a sign of light flooding the room, the walls

Beyond the cottonwoods

a garden of cosmos alizarin godetias and cornflowers

Someone has just laid a lawn squares of a living carpet

the mayflies dance above it

The window in the wall with its vigas

casts ladders of light across the patio floor 
and onto the lawn

a bridge into another world

This morning I awoke in a strange house

made tea, but drank coffee instead

that familiar slow ponderous crunch 
of Betty's foot on the gravel

an old woman who spends her final days 
in this house her parents built

soon she will move to a fine new apartment on the Santa Fe river

The house is getting to be too much for her, she says.

The infrequent rain has stained the wall

with heiroglyphic code.

There is no water in the Santa Fe river

This is the end of the trail that leads to Mexico City

the mute clarion announces Sunday

Yes, today the sun also rises (to borrow a line)

I held a Pueblo pipe stem in my hand at midnight

No bowl, but as I made the proper pass from right to left arm

I felt the medicine anyway

A tuft of coarse strawberry hair—a scalp?

We introduced the notion of scalping our enemies

Who was more savage? 
The names speak for themselves

Kit Carson, Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa

They all rode into town one way or another

We arrived in a white ford with the latest technology

computerized excess

When the shadows of the cottonwood leaves

fall on the ground, they make circular patterns

like cluster of people

Teenagers line the plaza last night in tight knots

the light intersects shadow on the peach

This is like arriving next door to home 333 on an aqua door

I used to live at 333 Third Ave

My life dominated by the second prime number

or third of you count zero

Is zero a prime number or is it transparent like water,

like sly only giving the appearance of un divisibility

A cat wanders along a high wall the watertower on stilts

peers over a neighbor's fence into their private refuges

We are always seeking refuge.

Lucia and Betty talk on the island of bed amid boxes

We are four women in transition

young Michael, the only balance

Soon we will need to plan our days here, so little time

Words to know: Bering  Straits

civilization, Ice age mountains

boulders migration, mammoths, obsidian

stone age mica surplus specialize cahokia

an endless progression of shops up canyon road

one gallery after another in all the same hues

art for sale in cloying pastels

the written word

should be clean and bare

clear as light

firm as stone

two word are not

as good as one

            —anon

Two blocks from this palace where I sleep

where Delgado crosses the Santa Fe River

is where the Rosenbergs were arrested says Lee Rosenthal

Tomorrow we go to Los Alamos

the cottonwoods where the Manhattan Project was born

I am chasing my own ancestors across New Mexico

Last night we had rain, today the cottonwood leaves 

have that preternatural rustle of fall in the air 

a state of being

The peaches are gone from the windowsill 

I miss their elegancy against the cerulean sashes 

I've bought Betty nectarines as replacements

though I know it won't look the same 

Today we go to the pueblos

They say rainbows signify hope

over Frijoles Canyon 
Clouds dressed in salmon hues
four corners for rainbows 
lightning striking the earth

9/1990 (not sure why I put 1991 as Hotel La Flnda, Taos is 1990)

FOUR PEACHES

FOUR PEACHES

Four peaches on a windowsill

gather in the morning sun

the plastic nest is more air than bag.

Amiga, the dog, gives me her left paw

to shake hands, yet another howdy-do.
My thoughts flee as Michael whistles,

talking to her. We rise late

tranquility eminates from the adobe walls

such round earth terms

pleasing to the eye

and the cerulean window frame

the exact color of the sky

where nests four peaches 
the color of adobe.

9/90 date?

Santa Fe, NM

RRWG anthology, A Stone’s Throw reading

HOMELESS LIVE OFF POETRY SALE OF JOURNAL GIVES THEM CASH AND SELF-DIGNITY, NPA, Poetry USA, SJ Mercury News

(I was an editor, along with Mother Earth News)

September 6, 1990 | Mercury News, The (San Jose, CA)
Associated Press | Page: 2E | Section: California News

Some people see poetry on the mean streets of the city. Sometimes it's there -- literally.
The lives of 10 of San Francisco's homeless people have gone from bad to verse. They're still asking for money on street corners, but now they're selling copies of a poetry journal and keeping all the proceeds.

Street sales of "Poetry USA" promote the work of unknown poets and give the homeless vendors cash and -- according to them -- a greater sense of dignity. ''I feel better about myself. People can't look at me and say, 'He's just a homeless bum,' " said Eddie Wright, who used to panhandle before he began hawking the journal several times a week.

Wright said he has sold as many as 40 copies a day of the $1 magazine, enough for a night in a cut-rate hotel.

For Randy Moore, another street vendor, the earnings provide things most people take for granted but which he considers minor luxuries -- a good meal, clean clothes, a haircut.

''Poetry USA," published by the National Poetry Association, offers a mix of styles and themes by generally unknown poets. The poets aren't paid for their work but do get the valuable, if intangible, thrill of seeing their verse in print.

Some of the contributors are themselves homeless, and some poems describe the authors' difficult lives. A line in "Little or Nothing," in the journal's summer edition reads: "When one dies on the street, we all get burned."

For the publisher, the arrangement is good business as well as philanthropy. The loss in giving 2,000 copies to the homeless vendors and not taking any of the proceeds has been offset by the number of yearly $7.50 subscriptions new readers have sent back, according to Herman Berlandt, editor of "Poetry USA." Advocates for the homeless support the sales program even though they admit hawking poems will not provide big bank balances.

Representatives of The Coalition on Homelessness, which stores bundles of the journal for the vendors, said they passed out their last copies of "Poetry USA" and are now looking for other publishers interested in having publications distributed on the street.

Obligatory Hug Sept-Dec 1990, Russian River Writers' Guild, A Stone's Throw anthology reading (Maureen Hurley)

RRWG anthology, A Stone's Throw, The Paper, Sep 20.

River of Time, book review, Simone Wilson, The Paper, Aug 30, 1990

REGIONAL LOVERS AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

REGIONAL LOVERS AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

                  —for John Oliver Simon, who really put me through the wringer

At the national conference I nearly succeeded in avoided my ex-lover

altogether, but fate intervened to unravel the mystery

of what we'd become a year and a half later

Flying down a blind curve of stairs I ran into him

saying, Well, I guess I had to talk to you eventually.

He was on the way to the poet's baseball game

We sat on a log, under the shadow of an incense cedar

our backs to the westering sun, at a loss for words to break the silence

of unraveling the mystery of what we'd become a year and a half later,

we rehashed old lines as if it were possible to erase pain by clarification

I had to sift through the ashes to find out what was left of me

His confessions offered little solace or clarity

He says he's cured of 20-year-olds truth itself got twisted

He made me into the bad guy wanting someone to blame for his guilt

He crows about how the therapy has helped,

but is in the same pattern with woman # 3, or is it #43?

He hugs me, runs off to play baseball,

and the tears, dry for nearly a year,

break free of the dam imprisonment

I can't believe he sold my lamps not wanting contact,

and returned other ex-girlfriend's dishes

I had no tools to make sense of this carnage

Women ask if we'll reconcile,

some part of me wants something that doesn't exist.

They tell me how they seduced their ex-lovers, then said goodbye

we never went back

that doesn't exist

for once I was more important than baseball

We sat on the log tittering, knowing tongues were wagging

Devorah Major came over, saw us, abruptly turned away

Volcanic she muttered

Kathy Evans says her ex has a new family

Elizabeth McKim described John as a Peter pan,

a puere, the boy who never grow up  cycles of co-dependency,

like with Etheridge Knight who's dying of lung cancer 

Ingred says You need to process for a while,

Instead I run off to join what I thought was the multi-cultural caucus.

Francisco Alarcon's eyebrows raise like birds.

Tobey Kaplan says What are you doing here?

this is the gay caucus. I said Who cares?

We're all human aren't we?

At a time like this people's sexual persuasion

hardly mattered I needed to be with people

Luke Breit goes to get me a beer,

I barricade myself in the bathroom, easy tears

I could hear him shouting my name

When he found me again he said, This time don't disappear

when I get you a beer. More tears at the dance,

I abruptly turned and walked into the night

between the dark haunches of cars did John follow me? No

I'm swigging my beer and crying, finished my beer

reentered the hall like a space walker

then danced madly as if my life depended on it,

and it did. He enters, yes he did follow me.

I danced wildly all night with men, women, & champagne bottles

I was a marathon runner, the dance floor, my track.

I covered miles that night

gyrating and shimmering oozing sex and pain from every pore

I was like a bright flame of heightened intensity

his eyes upon me from across the room on the dance floor,

and from outside     blind I was always tracking him,

I didn't even have to look to see where he was

I could sense him with my eyes closed.

Once he danced too closely behind me, his toe under my heel

how he watched me as one man  played with my long scarf,

spinning me, tying me around the waist spinning me like a top

He was taking note. speculation & jealousy

Last dance— he stood alone in the middle of the room, hangdog

I took a healthy swig from my champagne bottle

danced into his arms  He gathered me in  "Goodnight Sweetheart"

perhaps this was the final ceremony we were seeking

Perhaps we were reluctant to take the final step severing the ties.

This dance was something I could offer him

the outfields of my body, a reminder of that close animal warmth

we shared. Impulsively I kissed him on the neck.

I was high, I was drunk we held each other close as the dance ended,

I didn't even look at him, just turned and walked away

my rules my game metamorphosis, the anorexia,

My writing literally saved me that year.

Kathy said seeing us dance together made her all weepy

We were all family and there was nowhere left to hide

and so it really is goodbye sweetheart this is the end at last

someone warned me the process in doesn't stop

even when you both have new mates

clearing the air  yes now I understand the pattern.

8/90

Dominican College, San Rafael

A WOMAN IS LIKE A PEAR

A WOMAN IS LIKE A PEAR

The pear holds memory of falling—

invisible when green, the bruise ripens,

spoils the fruit from within.

8/22/90

WHY A WOMAN IS LIKE  A PEAR

The pear holds memory of falling—

invisible when green, the bruise ripens,

spoils the fruit from within.

8/22/90



first draft

WHY A WOMAN IS LIKE  A PEAR

how the pear holds memory of falling—

the blemish, only to appear when ripe

spoiling the fruit from within.

8/22/90

TAMING THE MINOTAUR

TAMING THE MINOTAUR dream sequence

I was buying 2nd hand sheets in the Avignon pattern

I will only have to pay my grandmother 
for what I take with me

but I have to wash them first

I'm sorting my jewelry in the wet black dirt

by stone and color and metal 
Sifting through my heritage—

a hammered brooch with a ruby garnet 
the triangle of the goddess

like an eye, the eye of the bull in Sephanie's barn

and I'm washing my jewelry at the laundromat

My mother comes out, 
I'm afraid she'll steal them and we're fighting

I scream do you know what it's like 
to be the daughter of a schizophrenic?

the shame, and in public
she gets more outrageous,

it's an act I tell her, we are close to blows

my truck turns into a horse 
wheeling and snorting when I try to get near.

Inside my truck is my bed but it is frozen

I want to put my amulets 
and jewelry in it but it won't let me

I can't return them to the frozen womb.

when my brother chases it, it makes it worse

he challenges the monster into the barn

a great dark beast with foliage

sage shaking from his body

the Minotaur come thundering out of his lair.

I'm hanging from two meathooks on the barn wall

as he smashes into it, his hot breath on my heels

my brother tricks it into another ring

he continues to run until he severs a foreleg

and turns into a small bronze bull

but still we can't stop him

even on three legs he charges

why were we teasing him, coaxing him

out of the darkness when he was in a pure rage

no reasoning here

we had to transform him, capture him

so he wouldn't ambush us

he said, this is where my father 
enters into the relationship

when it gets real. 
This is where my mother enters into it

the shame of family madness

I won't carry the burden, 
I owe that allegiance to myself.

8/21/90

KPFA interview on censorship and the arts with Ken Larsen

 

PARASITIC WASPS

PARASITIC WASPS
Love, where is thy sting?
—after St. Paul
 Death where is thy sting-a-ling
   —from a 30s song
Nature is non-moral.
—Steven J. Gould

We abhor the notion of the parasitic wasp
burrowing blind through live flesh.
Resembling a dormant seed, it lies asleep
in the larval stage, awaiting the cue
to fill its bounteous desire.
When its appetite is glutted,
it emerges, winged into sensuous air,
free at last from the prison of host-carcass,
having satiated the blood-lust
and the consuming desire that indulged
its cannibalistic instincts—
We learn nature is non-moral,
but the religion of love
is based upon the unprincipled plundering
of the soft underbelly of the earth;
we dream our vanities into being.
That insidious questing hunger
glistens phosphorescent in the dark,
that imperfect prey; spent passion abandons
the husk of its crippled army,
scatters corpses like leaves to the wind—
the ghostly remainders of our lives.

8/20/90 & 5/91

Inanna, Searching for the Goddess at CMA, The Paper, Aug 16, 1990

Journal entry, 8/8/90,Wasting time

8/8/90   On Wednesday I go up to Mendocino for a Wasting time meeting, and a mini vacation. The following weekend it’s my high school reunion, and then the National Poetry Conference, followed by a trip to New Mexico two weeks later. And I was afraid that I would have nothing to do over the summer. I’ve barely begun to tackle most of the projects on my list, namely the translations, and my taxes. I also have two articles over my head, plus the final revision of my censorship essay. I feel overwhelmed. Of course I still haven’t finished my packets to the USSR, and they have to go out on Monday. Along with everything else, and I’ve frittered away a whole week. And my neck and back are now threatening to go into spasm so I’m physically uncomfortable to boot.

Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost

double-click to enlarge

Journal entry, 7/30/90 new boss

7/30/90 Jim Caroll is my new editor at The Paper, and I’m nervous—especially after our darkroom interchange. Awkward. I’ll have to tell him how I feel, and then get over it. It is my problem that I’m so uneasy around him, but when he said I couldn’t use the darkroom after saying that I could, it was awkward. I felt like a fool caught doing something wrong.

Now that Tom Roth quit as the editor, Jim is it. Lisel says he’s great to work with, etc., it’ll be fine. I told Simone Wilson how uneasy I was. Am I the only one acting like a cat before an earthquake? I guess it’s because I’m not sure of the ground rules. No trust. I don’t know where I or they stand and I don’t know how to act. It’s like an actor missing her cue lines. Oh my God, I’m in the wrong play! Already I am missing my old editor Nick Valentine.

I want to stay in this frame of mind to understand and analyze it, so that I can learn from it. What buttons of mine have been pushed to make me feel and so incompetent, worthless, and unsure of myself? I’m not afraid of feeling this way. It’s a gut-level reaction which makes it more complicated because my gut is a very accurate barometer. Why must I exercise such caution? Why can’t I just be myself—a capable human being. Why am I being so sensitive?

Anyway, other than the darkroom misunderstanding, Jim has been perfectly civil to me. He even said that they sold lots of issues on my arts article. People said they liked the article and thanked him and owner John Boland (formerly of KQED), for doing a fine job on the censorship issue. So now I have cart blanche in the writing arena, something I’ve always wanted, and I’m balking. Probably because regardless of who’s at the helm, when shakedowns occur, someone gets axed. In the past it was always me, though last time I refuse to be fired. My therapist was rather amazed by my tenacity and willingness to fight for my job, but it took its toll, making me feel so awful. I’ve always been on the fringes, a stringer, a contributor and I’m moving more into the writing arena than photography, my former area of expertise. Growing pains.

Journal entry, 7/28/90 sleep

7/28/90  I awaken to the hammering of carpenters raising the walls of Laurie’s bedroom. All memory of dreams are gone with the staccato. I’m finally catching up on my sleep. It’s taking a long time to be able to sleep in again. As a kid I always needed my sleep. I never thought that work would erode my sleep cycle. I got so used to operating on 6 to 7 hours sleep a night that I thought that tiredness from a lack of sleep was a normal attribute of nearing 40.

George, my neighbor and I went to the flea market yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to see much but I ran into John Masura. His daughter Nadia was raising money for college. John and I had a long talk about various USSR items. Dr. Shpak is now in Iowa, of all places, a translator for a group of kids from Cherkassy visiting on the farm. Boy, these Cherkassy folks really get around. I wonder how many have come to the US? John will soon call Vera and ask if anyone is coming over or not. Vera was supposed to be here by now. She arrives mid-August if all goes well.

Hart Crane's 101th Birthday Party

The Paper was first launched in 1979 by Elizabeth Poole and Nick Valentine, in Guernewood Park, and Monte Rio. I began working for The Paper around 1980.  Somewhere along the way, it became the West Sonoma County Paper. Nick Valentine or John Boland may have changed the name again. John moved it from Monte RIo to Forestville to Freestone and to Santa Rosa. When it was purchased in 1994 by Silicon Valley-based Metro Newspapers Group (a chain of 10 weeklies: AAN members Metro Silicon Valley and Metro Santa Cruz), it became the Sonoma County Independent. The Sonoma County Independent morphed into the Northern California Bohemian in 2000. I use the same name throughout, though I worked for at least three iterations of the paper.

BETWEEN THE LINES

BETWEEN THE LINES

                                    —for Jim Dodge

As the blind kitten named Lassie teeths on my toes,

we talk of finding our way home

            to the end of a sentence

and of conjunctions; however, at a loss for words,

our conversation meanders like the perverse bed

of a slow stream oxbowing in and out of itself.

We admire faded pink bachelor buttons

and exposed bulbs flushed from the flowerbed,

studying the hidden patterns of nature

& the inquisition of awkward first-person

perspectives buried in the plot

            of sub-text and context.

Again he asks, Do you still believe in love?

I say I don't regret the falling in love part,

just the endings are harder to erase.

As I turn to leave, my face aches

like the skull grinning on his t-shirt.

He adds, Poetry is on its deathbed in America,

I'm no guru when it comes to love either.

Warns me to tell the truth when I write,

Love over gold—as if it were an option.

The nervous heat searing the air

into shimmering ropes of light,

ripples the afternoon like a pond.

7/13/90

Censorship; Art or Obscenity, The Paper, Jul 12, 1990

KEEPING SCORE

KEEPING SCORE, ii


As if to jar me out of my hermetic existence,
this guy, fishing around, asks if I still believe in love,
and to keep myself near shore, far from his whirlpool eyes,
I spend the morning compiling jaded lists.
Of the multitudes, the men I've truly loved are few.
But each one left me beached after the act of conception;
and so, hare-like, three times I absorbed my young,
and practiced self-division, keeping score with prime numbers
by pounding my fist on my heart, and singing: Mea maxima culpa.
The ranks swelled—only when banished from my lover's arms,
seeking solace, I occasionally slipped off the shroud.
But I grew used to that refuge it offered—
unless they reappeared on my doorstep late at night—
apparitions, and that slender seducer, the rain, always falling.
Then, there are those whom I'm saving for a rainy day.
The indistinction between sexual and filial love is more durable,
unlike the declared half-life of an average romance.
Most nights are spent behind these cabin walls,
with only the fog, wind or stars to deceive me.
After two decades of practice, I'm tired of keeping score.
and though I've run out of hands, toes and limbs

to count on, the deluge still comes out to a slim 

1.3 cocks per year—less than the US national average
of children per family, or cars in each garage.
What about the statistics of inflation and extended families?
Have they taken serial monogamy into consideration as well?
I need an abacus on my heartsleeve just to keep track—
And so, celebating the end of my 30s,
so I tell him: yes, I still believe in love; but the ghosts
of children resurrect playing fields of trinitite while I sleep,
and the future appears as an indigo shawl spattered
with the crushed remains of stars, the color of his eyes.

7/17/90
rev. ?

Arcata

1993 We Are Not Swans, with Cecelia Woloch
1992 Tin Ear/Wire Mother (first version, below)

More Jim Dodge
Jim Dodge

BETWEEN THE LINES

Letter to Jim Dodge

1992 Tin Ear/Wire Mother (first version)




old version, replete with ascii kruft

KEEPING SCORE -As if to jar me out of my hermetic existence, )this guy asks if I still believe in love, seeking solace, I occasionally slipped off the painful shroud. /But I grew too used to that refuge it offered— 4unless they reappeared on my doorstep late at night, Elike apparitions, and that slender seducer, the rain, always falling. 6Then, there are those whom I'm saving for a rainy day. CThat indistinction between sexual and filial love is more durable, 5unlike the declared half-life of an average romance. +On Valentine's Day, my X sent me a present: .the results of his HIV test—a license to fuck. 0Most nights are spent behind these cabin walls, 0with only the fog, wind or stars to deceive me. ;After two decades of practice, I'm tired of keeping score. >I'm lousy at swine markets, and though I've run out of hands, 7toes and limbs to count on, the deluge still comes out ?to a slim 1.3 cocks per year—less than the US national average 0of children per family, or cars in each garage. =What about the statistics of inflation and extended families? ;Have they taken serial monogamy into consideration as well? 6I need an abacus on my heartsleeve just to keep track— -And so, celebating the end of my addled 30s, 9I tell him, yes, I still believe in love; but the ghosts Aof children resurrect playing fields of trinitite while I sleep, 4and the future appears as an indigo shawl spattered 9with the crushed remains of stars, the color of his eyes. 7/17/90

Letter to the editor on my memoir, I, Poet

I suspect that David Bromige wrote this rather terse unsigned poison pen letter to the editor. He never really liked me and often put me down, or thwarted my plans while I was a student of his at Sonoma State. Allergic to no, I took the bit in my teeth and ran with it, which made him even more cantankerous. We eventually kissed and made up but it took a decade or two.

Dear James Carroll,

Someone should tell Maureen Hurley that the line she attributes to Keats in her “I, Poet” article is both misquoted and Wordsworth. Maybe you should. Maybe you should have before the piece was published – to save embarrassment and preserve credibility. And wouldn’t it would be better to ask your writers to follow their articles with their credits (Joe Blow’s book was published, etc.) or (in the third person) – rather than incorporate them in the text, (I, I, I,) where it appears narcissistic – just a thought.

                —A Reader

Otherwise a nice piece.

• I, Poet

• David Bromige 1933-2009